REVIEW

By Jeremy Julian @faithfulmantis

It’s about time that Marvel finally gets the Telltale Games treatment. After the success of Batman, it left fans with the yearning to have more superhero games made by the developer. Enter “Guardians of The Galaxy: A Telltale Series.”

The first episode released on April 18 for most systems, including mobile phones. The game came out just in time for the release of the new film next month. It features all of the Guardians led by Star-Lord in an all-new adventure.

Initially coming into this game, I couldn’t help but compare it to the film franchise. “Guardians” is a comic book series that wasn’t very popular when it came to the actual books, so the only other media we have of the universe is the first film that was released in 2014.

The biggest difference between the game and movie is that it’s an all-new cast of actors playing the group of heroes. Nolan North is the most notable in his role as the sarcastic and adorable Rocket Raccoon.

The first episode revolves around the leader of the Guardians, Peter Quill, who is also known as Star-Lord. Scott Porter does a good job as Star-Lord and helps bring to the overall comedic tone of the game.

The writing and voice acting really captures Guardian’s tone. There’s a mixture of fast, fun and comedic delivery with its dialogue. The first episode is under two hours, which is average length and expected of a first Telltale Episode. In terms of story, it was able to set the tone for future episodes and gives players insight into these heroes.

The game plays like other Telltale games when it comes to movement, dialogue and combat. The combat consists of quick time events like other titles but it’s somewhat more choreographed because you play as superheroes.

It’s more action-packed and over the top compared to the “Walking Dead” titles. It’s faster paced than other titles made by this developer and the combat allows you to fight as multiple characters in one single sequence.

Telltale manages to keep the combat somewhat fresh and fun while still being incredibly simplistic throughout. The game also puts the player into the action immediately by including an entertaining battle with one of Marvel’s most menacing villains.

The game does have some familiar issues that Telltale has yet to fix. The Telltale Tool is the proprietary engine that the developer uses in all of their games. Sadly, the engine is outdated and has been suffering from the same problems for the past five years.

During conversations and combat, I found myself interrupted by various frame rate drops and other visual glitches. The animations can also be very awkward at times, as Star-Lord looks strange in some ways while walking around. Some of the fight scenes are hindered because of animation issues as well. These games aren’t graphically intensive in anyway and yet they still suffer from these issues. Hopefully, Telltale realizes this soon and scraps the engine in favor of a new one built from the ground up.

Despite its technical shortcomings, Telltale’s video game adaption of the “Guardians of the Galaxy” series is very good so far. The first episode is a strong introduction to the series and hopefully it can build off of that momentum in the future.